Indian state-owned refiner Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited has declared force majeure on crude feedstock supply as well as refined product deliveries after having to shut its 15 million mt/year (300,000 b/d) refinery due to a water shortage, one of MRPL’s directors said Friday.
The company’s managing director, UK Basu, had said Thursday that the refinery was fully shut and that the company was trying to defer crude deliveries into the plant at Mangalore on the west coast of India, and that oil product shipments would be delayed.
The director confirmed Friday that a general force majeure had been declared for both incoming and outgoing shipments.
“We have asked buyers to defer lifting by a few days or weeks,” he said.
He did not say when the force majeure was effective from, but trading sources in Mumbai said it would affect product shipments from May.
Some export shipments, such as to Mauritius, would continue at least for April, according to the director. “We are planning to send this month’s consignments to Mauritius,” he said.
Separately, further downstream, a trader with a Japanese trading house said MRPL had informed his company on Thursday of a force majeure on the supply of isomer-MX as well. The company had earlier been awarded MRPL’s sell tender for 10,000 mt of isomer-MX for loading April 16-25 from New Mangalore.
One indication that there might have been an earlier problem is that the Aframax crude tanker Ratna Shruti, with close to 600,000 barrels of Iranian crude, has been sitting outside the New Mangalore port since April 10, according to Platts’ ship-tracking tool cTrack.
MRPL was receiving around 5.5 million gallons/day of water from the Nethravathi river.
Water availability in the Netravati river and its downstream dams started depleting from the end of March, MRPL said last week. As a result the district authorities enforced the reduction of water supply to MRPL to a third and finally on April 11 completely stopped the intake of water from the river, the company said.
Water is mainly required to generate steam for the captive power generation plant at the refinery, an MRPL official said, adding that water is also required for other units and for heat process units.
The company filed a case against the district authorities in the Karnataka high court on April 18 and the case first came up for hearing on April 19, but was subsequently adjourned to April 20, a company official said.
MRPL recently expanded the nameplate capacity of its refinery to 15 million mt/year, but the plant’s operable refining capacity is currently at around 12 million mt/year.
